| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.
V.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And, round about his home, the glory
The Fall of the House of Usher |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Bab:A Sub-Deb, Mary Roberts Rinehart by Mary Roberts Rinehart: Now I have always loved my mother, although feeling sometimes that
she had forgoten about having been a girl herself once, and also
not being much given to Familey embrases because of her hair being
marceled and so on. I therfore felt that she would probably be
angry and send me to bed.
But she was not. She got up very sudenly and came around the table
while William was breaking a plate in the pantrey, and put her hand
on my shoulder.
"Dear little Bab!" she said. "You are right and I am wrong, and we
will just turn in and do what we can, all of us. We will give the
party money to the Red Cross."
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Fantastic Fables by Ambrose Bierce: beautiful country, by the dusty highway which leads to the City of
Prosperous Obscurity. Lured by the flowers and the shade and
charmed by the songs of birds which invited to woodland paths and
green fields, his imagination fired by glimpses of golden domes and
glittering palaces in the distance on either hand, the Young
Politician said:
"Let us, I beseech thee, turn aside from this comfortless road
leading, thou knowest whither, but not I. Let us turn our backs
upon duty and abandon ourselves to the delights and advantages
which beckon from every grove and call to us from every shining
hill. Let us, if so thou wilt, follow this beautiful path, which,
Fantastic Fables |
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: younger men of the service that all rushed into rivalry of daring
which disdained every warning of prudence, and led to acts of
heroic enterprise which tended greatly to exalt the glory of our
nation."
These are his words, and they are true. The dashing young frigate
captain, the man who in middle age was nothing loth to give chase
single-handed in his seventy-four to a whole fleet, the man of
enterprise and consummate judgment, the old Admiral of the Fleet,
the good and trusted servant of his country under two kings and a
queen, had felt correctly Nelson's influence, and expressed himself
with precision out of the fulness of his seaman's heart.
The Mirror of the Sea |
